


Proprioception

by Attic_Nights



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Blood, Fluff and Angst, Long-Distance Relationship, M/M, Murder Husbands, Post-Capture, Tumblr Prompt, Vignette, post-season 3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-23
Updated: 2016-04-23
Packaged: 2018-06-03 22:08:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6628567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Attic_Nights/pseuds/Attic_Nights
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He uses up five precious words to inquire as to Will’s appearance, but Will just scrawls back,</p><p>“Think of me how I was.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Proprioception

**Author's Note:**

> Written as a response to a tumblr prompt meme: #39 - Long Distance Relationship, requested by [howishughdancyevenpossible](http://howishughdancyevenpossible.tumblr.com/). Originally posted on my [tumblr](http://attic-nights.tumblr.com/post/143060242818/hiii-for-the-short-fic-request-could-you-pls)
> 
> This stupid, baffling little fic has been lurking on my harddrive too long.

At one point, they try new medication on Hannibal. Only the once, though. Instead of calming, it affects. He shouts wildly, his control artificially gone. He snaps with sharklike teeth and blood-black eyes at the guards who try to sedate him. My Husband. My Husband. He shouts until he roars. He roars, clawing at the glass walls for fourteen hours. Until the dermis burns from his hands. Until his voice cries hoarse and waveringly. But he keeps going. My husband. My husband. At the fifteenth hour he begins to cry, huddled, oozing tears and snot onto his white jumpsuit, gathered in a pathetic ball in the center of the room and that shouldn’t be worse. But it is.

Every six months they are gifted with a pen and a single sheaf of paper.

Their words, naturally, are screened. Only 100 words a time, carefully counted. Can’t use too many to hold too much influence. Whoever wrote this rule doesn’t know the power of words.

The letters hold their scent. It helps, somewhat.

Before this, they were all sounds. All touch. All taste, warmth, balance and –

Whole.

Will sleeps in the very center of his gently padded cell - a long dark streak of overalls and curls. He lies here and not in his cot by the wall, because he thinks that if he could see it, Hannibal would appreciate the symmetry. The guards watch him sleeping with his hands folded on his stomach to clutch at his 'smile.' The guards forget him dangerous. For the most part, at least.

Hannibal sleeps in his glass walled dungeon with both hands pressed tight against his heart as if in prayer. He wakes up snarling, glaring at the cameras with eyes dull and flat.

Some days they sleep against the same wall, an impossible wall, back to back on a ground not nearly as solid as their bond. And yet somehow they feel further apart than they have ever been. Further than even the 527 miles separating them.

Hannibal imagines Will there, some days, and Will imagines Hannibal there, some days. Through the glass or bars that separate them, he imagines lips shape his name. But he can’t hear it. What if its changed? His voice? The way he says it? Why he says it?

Hannibal starts to draw Will with white streaking his hair at his temples. He decorates his Will with a grizzled beard and, with every passing year, he etches his husband’s crows feet a little deeper, a little more branching. Like frost. Like antlers.

He uses up five precious words to inquire as to Will’s appearance, but Will just scrawls back,

“Think of me how I was.”

Once, Hannibal draws them together instead of composing a letter. He lingers before placing it in the envelope, because it’s possible he’s misjudged the years on even his own face. He has glass but no mirrors. He balls up the sketch, thinks of it no more, and writes him a hundred words of chaos theory instead.

Will replies to this by quoting Mick Jagger, and for good measure he draws little stick figures of them near the ocean. With dogs.

Though Will's convinced the sketch will be destroyed in censorship, he laughs the following spring to read that not only had Hannibal received it, but he'd loved it so much he'd eaten it. The guards exercise more caution after that.

A girl whose badge reads 'Clarice' visits Hannibal one day. They open the soundproof glass and for the first time in years he hears a voice. She sees his drawings and he feels oddly protective of them, as if no one but he should see his heart so displayed. He speaks to her with a calm carefully measured so as to tear her apart. Quid pro quo, he thinks. As soon as she leaves he tears into his sketches. Lovingly he eats them all, piece by piece, before she returns. This time, she offers him the world. Or, at the very least, an island on which to live with Will.

Will doesn’t hear of Hannibal’s escape – they don’t tell him. The guards don’t even look at him, for fear of him reading the truth there anyway. No, Will sees the results first hand. Bloodied, beautiful, with his sharp teeth dripping with red, his hair streaked snow-white and his aged eyes filled with love. His arms are warm and his hands are…

Real.

“Hannibal?”

He’s real.

“Will?”

Real.

Now that they’re touching they can’t stop, but it’s subtle. Running down hallways with their bloodied hands entwined. A fond hand on a sleeping thigh while driving. Mending wounds with their ankles hooked together. Building a house with their elbows brushing. Sharing an umbrella with protective arms swept around each other.

One can’t separate something that’s whole.


End file.
